In the production of garments in an industrial setting in which batches of garment parts are delivered to work stations where the garment parts are connected together, it is important that the equipment provided to the worker be fast and efficient in its operation, but also it is important that the garment parts can be expediently loaded on the equipment. Further, it is highly desirable that once the garment parts have been loaded in position and the equipment is placed in operation that the worker be able to momentarily leave the equipment while the equipment continues to operate. This enables the worker to operate more than one machine and to gather more garment parts and match them together for presentation to the machine for its next cycle of operation.
In the production of stretchable garments, such as sweat suits made of stretchable knit material, it is sometimes difficult for the worker to accurately control the material as it is being fed to the sewing machine. For example, when the waist band of a sweat suit is to be connected to the waist edge of the shirt body, the waist band may be of smaller breadth than the waist edge of the shirt body when both garments are relaxed. When the waist band and the waist edge of the shirt body are being guided by hand to the sewing machine, the worker must stretch the waist band with respect to the waist edge of the shirt body in order that they are properly matched in breadth as they are sewn together. Further, the edge portions of the knit material tend to curl as they are stretched, which requires the operator to make sure that the curled edges are flattened before they are presented to the sewing needle of the sewing machine. Because of these inherent problems in presenting the stretchable material by hand to the sewing needles of the sewing machine, the machine operator is required to develop a relatively high skill in presenting the work product to the sewing machine, and the presentation of the work product to the sewing machine requires substantially full attention of the operator during the operation of the sewing machine. This results in the operator not having time during the cycle of operation of the sewing machine to retrieve and assemble the next garment parts that are to be presented to the sewing machine or to operate two machines simultaneously.